Australian independent news site covering politics, media, business and technology, with a left-leaning, critical view of government and mainstream outlets.
HN commenters link it for Australian context: media bias, the ABC and a whistleblower case, satellite internet in rural areas, and crime statistics.
People reading this may not realize how pervasive gambling is in Australia thanks to poker machines ("pokies"). These are slot machines, basically. And they're everywhere with one exception: they're illegal outside of casinos in Western Australia.
In every other state, you can walk into many pubs and RSLs ("Retired Servicemen's Leagues", veteran's clubs, basically) and sit there and lose your house. Pokies can be the only thing keeping many businesses in business. They licenses are so valuable that some businesses are bought simply so the licenses can be transferred. Some state governments realize this so reduce the number of licenses on transfer (eg you buy a business wih 20 pokies and you get to transfer 16 and lose 4). This had the predictable outcome of having pokie licenses skyrocket in value.
AFAIK sportsbetting (eg DraftKings) is illegal in Australia because the government has realized how damaging it is yet pokies remain legal.
Oh it's worth adding that Stake, which is headquartered in a shack in Curacao for legal reasons, was started and run by Australians who have absolutely raked in the cash to the point of now being billionaires.
Another problematic part of all this is how gambling has been effectively used for money laundering. The casinos already got hit for allowing this to happen. Pokiies and smaller establishments remain a loophole.
Consider the case of Troy Stolz [1], who leaked documents about ClubsNSW not complying with anti-money laundering and…
That ~30% of GDP number is government debt.
I am not talking about government debt. I am talking about private debt.
Australia has a much much worse private debt problem than a government debt problem: total private debt ~150% GDP; mortgage debt ~80% GDP; gross foreign private debt ~85% GDP; gross federal public debt ~20% GDP [1].
The reason you take on debt matters. Almost all of that debt went towards unproductive bidding up of real estate. Much of the "growth" experienced in the last 20 years was just making the economy larger by importing more money via debt from overseas. I challenge anyone to argue that was a prudent course of action, unless you were a political party that wanted to get re-elected by making people feel richer.
Why intrinsic advantage? Australian wages/salaries are high, in part, because the average Australian has to pay so much to service their mortgage debt. Because service economies are human resourced, any where with humans can do those jobs. If Australia is inherently more expensive due to the overhead of high house prices, what services can we offer for which others are willing to pay a premium? Also, we must have a service economy bringing money in from overseas, rather than just supplying services internally, because we still have all that interest to pay on our debt.
The future for Australia might be bright in as much as it is slightly less dark than some other countries.
[1]…
The worst thing about this is the timing. There is a political storm in Australia over what is being seen to be done to save the reef. In a nutshell the Prime Minister just gave away 444 million dollars of taxpayer money to an organisation of 6 people without any due diligence. Turns out they are all ex bankers and oil company people.
The organisation didn’t even apply for the grant.
Sadly this has become a highly political thing and because of the current state of politics in Australia where your team must do the opposite of the other team (little bipartisan action in the last 10 years with fallout being carbon taxes, welfare, NBN) nothing is likely to be done until the current government is voted out. Even then with another change its likely to start all over again.
It’s a horrible state of affairs and sadly while a lot of Australian’s are outraged our politicians are beholden to other interests so nothing will be done.
If you want more background reading I’d suggest a quick look through the Australia subreddit, keeping in mind that the majority on there are very left leaning.
Some links of interest http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-09/barrier-reef-foundation-grant-shocking-myer-former-board-member/10090780 https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/turnbull-reefgate-and-rupert,11772 https://www.2gb.com/ben-fordham-takes-environment-minister-to-task-over-mysterious-444-million-reef-grant/
Fairfax is definitely not left leaning anymore, they're owned by Nine Entertainment which was strong ties to the Liberal government.
"AUSTRALIA’S MEDIA is more concentrated than in some countries that are under dictatorships, such as Turkey and Russia. The ownership and management of practically all of Australia’s print and television media, with exception to Network 10, have links to the Liberal Party. News Corp, chaired by Rupert Murdoch and majority-owned by the Murdoch family, owns around two-thirds of the print media and is a majority stakeholder in Foxtel and Sky News.
Nine Entertainment, which was established by the Liberal-linked Packer family and is chaired by former Liberal member Peter Costello, owns the Nine Network, about a third of Australia’s newspaper publications and subscription television service Stan. Seven West Media, which is majority-owned and chaired by Kerry Stokes, another Liberal supporter, owns Channel 7 and any major newspaper publications that are not owned by News Corp or the Nine Entertainment.
Ita Buttrose, another person with links to the Liberal Party, is chairperson of the ABC. Although most of Australia’s media is owned and run by Liberal supporters, there have been times when Australia’s media wasn't biased."
https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/the-effect-of-right-wing-bias-in-australias-media,14569
Except that Taiwan's ADIZ is not its sovereign airspace, but a unilaterally decided zone that covers large parts of mainland China.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/lack-of-perspective-on-taiwan-china-tensions,15623
Except that the border dispute with India was caused by the British, who randomly drew some borders somewhere that parties then later disagree with. India also has border disputes with non-China neighbors. China already tried to solve this diplomatically, for example by trading areas that India claims but are defacto China-controlled and vice versa, but India refused all deals so far because they want to claim in all.
Do note that China (PRC) has already given up land in the past as part of diplomatic deals. Check Vladivostok. Check the whole of Mongolia.
Western coverage of China’s border conflicts are extremely distorted. In the ASEAN summit, southeast asian nations are upgrading strategic ties with China.
https://www.france24.com/en/video/20211028-asean-summit-southeast-asian-nations-upgrade-strategic-ties-with-china
Many countries are worried about AUKUS. Malaysia planed China consultations as anxiety simmers over defence pact.
https://amp.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3149713/malaysia-plans-china-consultations-anxiety-simmers-over-aukus
> https://www.techdirt.com/2013/07/31/us-military-admits-no-on...
No deaths were proven, that does not mean nothing sensitive or harmful was in the data. The argument failed in the sense that the court found that the leaked info was sensitive and harmful at the time of release:
https://archive.org/details/usa-v-manning-third-party-transcripts/Manning-verdict-special-findings/page/n5/mode/2up page 7
> You dont remotely appear to be familiar with the facts OR are intentionally ignoring recent history. > https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cia-discussed-kidnapping-... > https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london... > https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/t... > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstler_v._Central_Intelligen...
The US has plans to nuke Russia and China too, doesn't mean they are going to follow through on them. Even in the absolutely unhinged Trump administration, there were enough checks to stop the wilder plans from getting anywhere close to happening, and now the most objectionable thing the CIA ended up doing was getting the contents of some phones from UC Global, for which they are being sued.